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“I’ve always had my kids’ back no matter what. I was just so tired. Absolutely tired,” Jennifer Westfall insisted after she was arrested for leaving a 9-year-old and a 19-month-old by the side of a road.

A single mother from North Carolina is accused of abandoning her two young kids on the side of a road because she was tired of parenting.

Jennifer Westfall, 38, allegedly left her 9-year-old and her baby, who is just 19 months old, on the side of a road in Cary on October 2, according to Fox46 in Charlotte.

Another woman noticed the kids on the side of the road and she picked them up, taking them to a local school where Child Protective Services was called. Westfall claimed she watched that woman help her kids so she knew they were OK, and thought this whole process was a legal way to abandon her children, according to WTVD in Raleigh. North Carolina does have a safe surrender law (meaning you can legally leave your children with another adult), but it only applies to infants who are a few days old.

The mother was arrested on Monday and now faces two counts of misdemeanor child abuse.

Westfall told WTVD that she simply could not handle the work of being single parent anymore.

"I know what I did was wrong but I just, I was so tired of doing this by myself,” she told the outlet. “I have the strength to do what I need to do but I don't have the skills to make the income that I need to take care of my family, and nobody will hire me. I've been around everywhere. And with these charges I just don't see how I'm ever getting my kids back.”

She is not doing any parenting at the time being. The children are now in foster care. They were not harmed in the incident.

“I feel terrible about what I did,” she told WTVD. “I’ve always had my kids’ back no matter what. I was just so tired. Absolutely tired.”

Westfall has been released from jail and is due in court in December.

[Photo: Wake County Sheriff’s Office]

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